Meet the 2025 AARP Massachusetts Advisory Council

The AARP Massachusetts Advisory Council (AC) provides strategic direction for AARP at the state level. Each member brings uniquely valuable skills and experience to AARP.

MELODY BEACH
Melody Beach began her human resources career with Fenwal Safety Systems. In addition to FSS, Melody has worked for Rolls-Royce North America. She has provided human resources support to functions ranging from IT to business development as well as manufacturing personnel to administrative.
Melody earned her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management at Newbury College and her Master of Science in Leadership & Human Resources Management from Northeastern University. Melody is professionally trained and certified through The Center for Application of Psychological Type (CAPT) as a Certified Practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI Step 1 and Step II.
Melody lives in central Massachusetts with her husband and three fur babies. She loves gardening, meditation and yoga. She spends much of her spare time riding her Harley Davidson on the country roads of CT and Western MA or hiking and camping in the Berkshires with her husband.

KATHLEEN BETTS
Kathleen Betts is a lifelong resident of the Boston area and completed her undergraduate degree at Boston College and Masters in Public Health at Boston University. Her career path took her to both the public and private sectors in a variety of leadership positions. In 2015, Kathy retired from her role as Assistant Secretary for Children Youth and Families in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. She continued working in the field of public health by consulting for various agencies, and most recently served as Chief Community Officer, Director of Community Health for Cambridge Health Alliance. 

DENNIS HOHENGASSER
Dennis has been a volunteer with AARP since October 2015. He received a Bachelor of Science in Education and taught school for 9 years before beginning his 33-year career with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the area of Employee Training and Staff Development. He began his volunteering he focused on AARP’s rollout of the Fraud Watch Network. Having been victimized by a scam, he knows first-hand how easy it is to fall prey to scammers. He expanded his volunteer activities to include tabling events. mentoring new Speakers Bureau volunteers and supporting the Volunteer Portal. He has a passion for helping to protect others from becoming victimized by fraud and scams. He has also been a volunteer with the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) since 2018, supporting Medicare beneficiaries and their families with presentations on protecting, detecting and reporting fraud, waste and abuse in the Medicare program & helping beneficiaries becoming engaged healthcare consumers. 

CHUCK MCKENZIE
Charles (“Chuck”) McKenzie spent more than 40 years in the financial services industry in the US and abroad, serving in client-facing, marketing, asset management and executive management roles for a variety of firms, including investment consulting firms, mutual fund companies, asset management firms, trust companies, banks and insurance companies.  Chuck’s career took him and his wife to London, England and Tokyo, Japan for 5 years, before they returned to Massachusetts in mid-2019. 
Now a resident of Cotuit on Cape Cod, Chuck is a senior advisor to an investment management start-up firm, he serves on the Town of Barnstable’s Comprehensive Financial Advisory Committee, he is a volunteer tax preparer for the AARP Tax-Aide Foundation on the upper Cape, and he is an officer of the Cotuit Highlands Association.
In his spare time, Chuck enjoys golf, travel, kayaking, modern art, reading (fiction and non-fiction) and writing.
Chuck has a BA from Bates College, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and has attained a number of professional designations, including CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst), CFP (Certified Financial Planner), FLMI (Fellow of the Life Management Institute), and CEBS (Certified Employee Benefit Specialist), and he is a Level 3 Golf Instructor certified by the USGTF.

ELLIE MEYER
Ellie Meyer is an occupational therapist with more than 30 years of clinical experience. She has been working for Paragon Rehabilitation as a program director and clinician since 2013 at locations in Cambridge, Brighton and Natick. She is a Certified Aging in Place Specialist with the National Association of Home Builders and has an Executive Certificate in Home Modifications from the University of Southern California. Ellie is a founding member of Home Modification Occupational Therapy Alliance (HMOTA) which seeks to promote the role of occupational therapy in home modifications, and she is completing 12 years as the Public Relations Representative for the Massachusetts Association of Occupational Therapy (MAOT). She has offered her skills in home assessment to both Rebuild Together Boston as well as the Boston Survivors Accessibility Alliance which served the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing.
Since 2014 Ellie has been instrumental in organizing volunteer recruitment and training for the AARP HomeFit program in Massachusetts. As a doctoral student at Boston University, she is working to develop a supplemental curriculum of study for entry-level occupational therapy students which will prominently feature HomeFit. It is her hope that this will result in an increase in the number of occupational therapy professionals volunteering to be HomeFit presenters, not only in Massachusetts, but across the country where the curriculum is adopted.

DOUGLAS C. PRENTISS
Douglas C. Prentiss is a traffic/transportation engineer with over 40+ years of experience in the traffic/transportation field having provided technical assistance to many communities throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is a registered professional engineer (P.E.) in traffic and has a bachelors degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in transportation. He also was one of the original instructors for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s successful state-wide Complete Streets initiative, which was initiated in 2009 and is still on-going today. He has been involved with AARP's Driver Safety (DS) program as an instructor in the Commonwealth since 2014 and was on AARP's National Content Advisor Committee that revamped the DS curriculum in 2020-2022. In his spare time, he works on his 1820 3/4 Cape house and other projects. He also bikes, hikes, reads, and assists his wife on various gardening projects.

CARIN UPSILL
Carin Upstill came aboard as an AARP ‘virtual volunteer’ in MA during the advent of COVID, with 20 years’ experience working as Senior Project/Program Manager on Digital Healthcare in Disease Management and Wellness programs with hospitals, health plans and providers. More recently this included managing telehealth/virtual care, Medicare and COVID Vaccine/Booster programs at CVS Health. Carin has served on the Community Challenge Grants’ team for 4+ years. She also participated in the national AARP volunteer leadership course, “Letting Go,” where volunteers partner with AARP staff to develop skills around project delegation and collaborative working relationships. In 2022 while preparing to move from the Boston area to the Berkshires in western MA, Carin joined the AARP Speakers Bureau team and presented a personalized Downsizing & Decluttering program.

Carin’s interest and involvement in ‘Aging in Place’ and ‘Livable Communities,’ has evolved from her continuing professional membership in the American Society on Aging and Aging Tech 2.0-Boston Chapter from 2018 – present. She brings community-based partnership experience from her past role as Breast Cancer Control Director at the American Cancer Society in NY state, where she was the liaison between healthcare coalitions and cancer patient-survivor groups. This work also included grass roots advocacy efforts with volunteers, policymakers, and local community leaders.

Additional volunteer work in MA includes Carin’s involvement with the Massachusetts Public Health Association, Policy & Advocacy, 2010-14. And based on prior experience in television production, she recently joined Pittsfield Community TV with the intention of co-producing future Age Friendly programs. Carin attended the Mailman School of Public Health Masters’ program at Columbia University; and received her B.A. in Psychology at the City University of New York, CUNY Baccalaureate Program